August 22, 2005

Amherst beats Williams in college rankings

It’s old news now that Amherst was #2 in the U.S. News “America’s Best Colleges” rankings, and that the other bunch out in Williamstown were #1. Having been around this particular block a few times, we are unconcerned (though if we are ranked #1 next year, we will certainly congratulate the editors of USN&WR on their perceptiveness.) The gap, from what we can tell, appears to be in financial resources and faculty resources, so to alumni who are concerned with rankings, we can only say two words: “annual fund.”

While the USN&WR ranking is widely watched by incoming first-years, parents, and admissions departments, we’re more pleased with Amherst’s trouncing of Williams in the Washington Monthly college guide, where Amherst was 6th and Williams a lowly 14th. (Wellesley topped the list, making sending your children to a top-ranked college problematic if you have only sons.) The Washington Monthly list places a premium on a commitment to national service (see, for example, our alumni in the Mississippi Teacher Corps.)

The first question we asked was, what does America need from its universities? From this starting point, we came up with three central criteria: Universities should be engines of social mobility, they should produce the academic minds and scientific research that advance knowledge and drive economic growth, and they should inculcate and encourage an ethic of service. We designed our evaluation system accordingly.

Parker Morse '96 | August 22, 2005 01:22 PM | Publications